Bloomberg has Taiwan’s China factor in focus: Ma’s victory is claimed by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (国务院台湾事务办公室, official site here in Chinese) to show that “peaceful development of cross-straits ties” in the last four years with KMT in power was “the correct path that has won the support of the majority of the Taiwanese compatriots.”

That said, can be it be argued that economy and not emotion was the key to moving Taiwan’s voters this time round?

The re-election of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, a booster of closer ties with China, is bullish for the island’s financial markets, according to Bank Julius Baer & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Uni-President Assets Management Corp.

Julius Baer, which oversees about $205 billion in client assets, is re-evaluating its “underweight” rating on Taiwanese equities and may buy airlines and hotel companies, Lee Boon Keng, head of the firm’s investment solutions group in Singapore, said by phone yesterday. Two-year bonds may rally as overseas investors buy Taiwan dollar-denominated assets to profit from a stronger currency, said Samson Tu, who helps manage $1.6 billion of fixed-income securities at Uni-President in Taipei.

Ma, the 61-year-old leader of the ruling Kuomintang Party, won a second four-year term as president after defeating Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party, in Jan. 14 elections. Ma’s first term was characterized by the pursuit of closer ties with China through trade agreements and the ending of a six-decade ban on direct air, sea and postal links. Read the rest of this entry »

This is five years old, but important nonetheless. Li Ao is one of the most vocal Chinese critics of our time, and both Taiwan and China are not let off in his historically-rich tirades. With a significant amount of his writing banned, this dissident writer got to tell the Chinese ‘what to do’ in his first visit to China. At a lecture at Peking University in 2005, “Mr. Li chided China’s leaders for suppressing free speech, ridiculed the university administration’s fear of academic debate and advised students how to fight for freedom against official repression…” and all this criticism happened in the mainland, at Peking University, arguably a top top university in China.

It goes against the grain of possibility for Western observers, but this is a reality in China; you do have some bandwidth and latitude to say what you want. Just know how to. Here is a full transcript of the lecture.

BEIJING, Sept. 22 – China’s leaders may have felt they had no better friend in Taiwan than Li Ao, a defiant and outspoken politician and author who says that Taiwan should unify with Communist China.

But when China invited Mr. Li to tour the mainland this week, the Communist Party got a taste of its rival’s pungent democracy.

During an address at Beijing University on Wednesday evening, broadcast live on a cable television network, Mr. Li chided China’s leaders for suppressing free speech, ridiculed the university administration’s fear of academic debate and advised students how to fight for freedom against official repression.

“All over the world leaders have machine guns and tanks,” Mr. Li told the students and professors in the packed auditorium. “So I’m telling you that in the pursuit of freedom, you have to be smart. You have to use your cunning.” Read the rest of this entry »